Now, I really don't know much about coding and all that stuff, but I had a random thought about how Sega could have prevented GD-Rom piracy. I'm sorry if this has been discussed before, but i'll go on anyway Right then, a GD-Rom is obviously a 1 GB disk. In order to fit larger games onto a CD-R (i.e - boots) you have to either remove video files, or downsample the audio, corrrect? So, would it be possible to hide a small bit of code somewhere in the main game code that does a check to see if a certain video file (say a massive end-sequence videofile) has been removed or downsampled? Or even if the actual game isn't that big (under 700meg), fill the rest of that GB disk with rubbish dummycode. But some where in that gibberish is a bit of code that has to be there for the game to boot. All DC games came on GD-Rom, so might as well fill that space with something useful That way, this security code that's hidden in the main game file (that has to be there and can't be altered) will stop the game from booting if either the videofile has been removed/downsampled or the gibberish code has been removed in order for it to fit on a CD-R. I hope this makes sense.
Well you are unable to prevent this since data has to be transfered from one end to another. For example the GCN PSO crack which is the end result of every other system games being copied. Personally I don't want to get into the subject of counter disk counter fitting unless I am going to be on some board the discuss it on a regular daily basis. Personally I wonder what method the Rev is going to use :lol:
If it was possible, consider that it would have been tried. The problem is all the pirate groups see that as a challenge and figure out ways around it.
The problem with that is if the game has protection (and some games DID) it just excludes lesser release groups that have only dumpers and no hackers. The hackers will just then hack the executable to remove your protection. If Sega was serious about security they should have made the DC unable to read CDs entirely. Only read GD-ROMs. Thus with no GD-Rs (none available to the masses) the piracy wouldn't have been an issue. The GCN PSO was just the first exploit into the system. Later you got better ones including SDLOAD using Action Replay and the Memory Card hack with Action Replay. And even if that hadn't happened the modchips would have gotten you in anyway. Also the GC drive so conviently had a debug function to enable DVD-R reading. If they were smart they would have made consumer models unable to read anything but encrypted discs.
On a side note, why precisely is it that the Dreamcast is one of the easiest systems to run bootlegs on? It is the only system I know of that will boot a game directly off cheap, writable media without any hardware modification. Funny that it's much easier (for the person running the bootleg, anyway) than a Saturn, even though it came later.
it has to do with the fact that they acidently life a piece of code in the bios that allows the dreamcast to easily boot game from a regual cd with a certain string of code. From what i read the developers of the hardware forgot to take it out of the bios, but it was so well hidden that when they realized it they didnt really have anything to worry about so they didnt act until someone finally dumped a gd and found the piece of code that boots games. The saturn itself is a different beast due to it using a special system in reading the secuirty ring, which has yet to be fully cracked due to the akward nature of it.
Easiest? Sega cd or 3do. Piracy is a billion dollar business. You don't wind up with a company full of electronics engineers in germany working 365 a year to get a mod chip to work for free...
This sounds good in theory, but it could be circumvented by a few no-ops edited into the code. -hl718
Or, you just mod the system instead of the disk, so it doesnt even need that security code on the disk. Problem solved that way
nice urban legend ... actually all Dreamcast Systems were able to boot "MIL-CDs" which is a data format used for bringing not only music on normal CDs, and which was exploited to run code on the dreamcast ... this is also the reason that there has to be an audio track on every CDR-game ... on later systems they just disabled the possibility to run MIL-CDs ... sidenote: there even was a "space channel 5" promo-mil ...
Personally I dislike hardware modifications since when you mod any system thats like me saying Okay I give up writing disks or porting threw the memory card or outlits. Thats why I like the GCN so much, you can run emulation and code from a laptop or mini PC and not have to worry about writing to disk or copy portection crap.
